Jake Chapman (born 1966) and Dinos Chapman (born 1962) are brothers and
English conceptual artists who work almost exclusively in collaboration
with each other. They came to prominence as part of the Young British
Artists movement promoted by Charles Saatchi.
Jake Chapman was born in Cheltenham and Dinos Chapman in London.
Their father was a British art teacher and their mother an orthodox
Greek Cypriot. They were brought up in Cheltenham but moved to Hastings
where they attended a local comprehensive before attending the
University of East London's Art college in Greengate, Plaistow and then
enrolling at The Royal College of Art, when they worked as assistants to
the artists Gilbert and George. They began their own collaboration in
1992. The brothers have often made pieces with plastic models or
fibreglass mannequins of people. An early piece consisted of
eighty-three scenes of torture and disfigurement similar to those
recorded by Francisco Goya in his series of etchings, Disasters of War
(a work they later returned to) rendered into small three-dimensional
plastic models. One of these was later turned into a life-size work,
Great Deeds Against the Dead, shown along with Zygotic Acceleration,
Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal Model (Enlarged x 1000) at the
Sensation exhibition in 1997. The Chapman brothers continued the theme of anatomical and
pornographic grotesque with a series of mannequins of children,
sometimes fused together, with genitalia in place of facial features.
Their sculpture Hell (2000) consisted of a large number of miniature
figures of Nazis arranged in nine glass cases laid out in the shape of a
swastika. In 2003 with a series of works named Insult to Injury, they
altered a set of Goya's etchings by adding funny faces. As a protest
against this piece, Aaron Barschak (who later became famous for
gate-crashing Prince William's 21st birthday party dressed as Osama bin
Laden in a frock) threw a pot of red paint over Jake Chapman during a
talk he was giving in May 2003. The Chapmans' oeuvre has also referenced
work by William Blake, Auguste Rodin and Nicolas Poussin. Jake Chapman
has published a number of catalogue essays and pieces of art criticism
in his own right, as well as a book, Meatphysics, published by Creation
Books in 2003. The brothers have also designed a label for Becks beer as
part of a series of limited edition labels produced by contemporary
artists. Using a title from the Tim Burton film, in 2004 they curated A
Nightmare Before Christmas as part of the occasional All Tomorrow's
Parties music festival at Camber Sands.
Jake and Dinos Chapman. Death, 2003, in the Turner Prize.The Chapman
brothers were nominated for the Turner Prize in 2003. As well as
including Insult to Injury, their Turner Prize exhibit debuted two new
works Sex and Death. Sex directly referenced their previous work Great
Deeds against the Dead. The original work shows three dismembered
corpses hanging from a tree, Sex shows the same scenario, but in a
heightened state of decay. Additionally clown's noses are now present on
the skulls of the corpses; snakes, rats and insects (like those found in
joke shops) cover the piece. Death is two sex dolls, placed on top of
each other, head-to-toe in the 69 sex position: despite appearing to be
made of plastic it is in fact cast in bronze and painted to look like
plastic. On 24 May 2004, a fire in a storage warehouse destroyed many
works from the Saatchi collection including Hell. The brothers
subsequently made a very similar, though more extensive, work called
Fucking Hell. In 2007, they were criticised by journalist Johann Hari
for adopting an anti-Enlightenment philosophy, and for Jake
Chapman saying that the boys who murdered Liverpool toddler
Jamie Bulger performed "a good social service". Jake Chapman
responded by calling Johann Hari "fat-faced ugly [and]
four-eyed" and "a fascist", and claimed the Bulger quote and
others had been "stripped from the serious debate in which they
belong".
It was announced in December 2007 that the brothers would play
Big Brother during 2008's Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack. They had to pull
out for undisclosed reasons. In May 2008 the White Cube gallery
exhibited 20 authenticated watercolours and oils painted by
Adolf Hitler, which the brothers have defaced with hippie
motifs. Jake Chapman described most of the dictator's works as
'awful landscapes' which they had 'prettified'.
Also included in the exhibition was Fucking Hell, the (somewhat altered)
remake of Hell.

Ubermensch

Zygotic
acceleration, biogenetic, desublimatedlibidinal model, 1995

Great Deeds
Against The Dead

Chess Set

Untitled

Tragic Anatomies

Tinkerbellend

The Disasters of War #45
1999

The
Anagrammatical Body

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